Posted on 02/21/2005 9:44:35 AM PST by FNU LNU
History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud
Flamboyant anthropologist falsified dating of key discoveries
Luke Harding in Berlin Saturday February 19, 2005 The Guardian
It appeared to be one of archaeology's most sensational finds. The skull fragment discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg was more than 36,000 years old - and was the vital missing link between modern humans and Neanderthals.
This, at least, is what Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten - a distinguished, cigar-smoking German anthropologist - told his scientific colleagues, to global acclaim, after being invited to date the extremely rare skull.
However, the professor's 30-year-old academic career has now ended in disgrace after the revelation that he systematically falsified the dates on this and numerous other "stone age" relics.
Yesterday his university in Frankfurt announced the professor had been forced to retire because of numerous "falsehoods and manipulations". According to experts, his deceptions may mean an entire tranche of the history of man's development will have to be rewritten.
"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish."
The scandal only came to light when Prof Protsch was caught trying to sell his department's entire chimpanzee skull collection to the United States. An inquiry later established that he had also passed off fake fossils as real ones and had plagiarised other scientists' work.
His discovery appeared to show that Neanderthals had spread much further north than was previously known. But his university inquiry was told that a crucial Hamburg skull fragment, which was believed to have come from the world's oldest German, a Neanderthal known as Hahnhöfersand Man, was actually a mere 7,500 years old, according to Oxford University's radiocarbon dating unit. The unit established that other skulls had been wrongly dated too.
Another of the professor's sensational finds, "Binshof-Speyer" woman, lived in 1,300 BC and not 21,300 years ago, as he had claimed, while "Paderborn-Sande man" (dated at 27,400 BC) only died a couple of hundred years ago, in 1750.
"It's deeply embarrassing. Of course the university feels very bad about this," Professor Ulrich Brandt, who led the investigation into Prof Protsch's activities, said yesterday. "Prof Protsch refused to meet us. But we had 10 sittings with 12 witnesses.
"Their stories about him were increasingly bizarre. After a while it was hard to take it seriously. You had to laugh. It was just unbelievable. At the end of the day what he did was incredible."
During their investigation, the university discovered that Prof Protsch, 65, a flamboyant figure with a fondness for gold watches, Porsches and Cuban cigars, was unable to work his own carbon-dating machine. Instead, after returning from Germany to America, where he did his doctorate, and taking up a professorship, he had simply made things up. In one case he had claimed that a 50 million-year-old "half-ape" called Adapis had been found in Switzerland, an archaeological sensation. In reality, the ape had been dug up in France, where several other examples had already been found.
Prof Terberger said that he grew suspicious about the professor's work in 2001 after sending off the skull fragment to Oxford for tests.
Further tests revealed that all of the skulls dated by Prof Protsch were in reality far younger than he had claimed, prompting Prof Terberger and a British colleague, Martin Street, to write a scientific paper last year.
At the same time, German police began investigating the professor for fraud, following allegations that he had tried to sell the university's 278 chimpanzee skulls for $70,000 to a US dealer.
Why, though, had he done it?
"If you find a skull that's more than 30,000 years old it's a sensation. If you find three of them people notice you. It's good for your career," Prof Terberger said. "At the end of the day it was about ambition."
Other details of the professor's life also appeared to crumble under scrutiny. Before he disappeared from the university's campus last year, Prof Protsch told his students he had examined Hitler's and Eva Braun's bones.
He also boasted of having flats in New York, Florida and California, where, he claimed, he hung out with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steffi Graf. Even the professor's aristocratic title, "von Zieten", appears to be bogus.
Far from being the descendant of a dashing general in the hussars, the professor was the son of a Nazi MP, Wilhelm Protsch, Der Spiegel magazine revealed last October.
The university is investigating how thousands of documents lodged in the anthropology department relating to the Nazis' gruesome scientific experiments in the 1930s were mysteriously shredded, allegedly under the professor's instructions. They also discovered that some of the 12,000 skeletons stored in the department's "bone cellar" were missing their heads, apparently sold to friends of the professor in the US and sympathetic dentists. Yesterday the university admitted that it should have discovered the professor's fabrications far earlier. But it pointed out that, like all public servants in Germany, the high-profile anthropologist was virtually impossible to sack, and had also proved difficult to pin down.
"He was perfect at being evasive," Prof Brandt said yesterday. "He would switch from saying 'it isn't really clear' to giving diffuse statements. "I'm not a psychologist so I can't say why he did it. But my guess is that when he came back from the States 30 years ago he realised he wasn't up to the job of being a professor. So he started inventing things. It rapidly became a habit.'
Yesterday the professor, who lives in Mainz with his wife Angelina, didn't respond to emails from the Guardian asking him to comment on the affair. But in earlier remarks to Der Spiegel he insisted that he was the victim of an "intrigue".
"All the disputed fossils are my personal property," he told the magazine.
Missing links and planted stone age finds
Piltdown Man
The most infamous of all scientific frauds was unearthed in 1912 in a Sussex gravel pit. With its huge human-like braincase and ape-like jaw, the Piltdown Man "fossil" was named Eoanthropus dawsoni after Charles Dawson, the solicitor and amateur archaeologist who discovered it. For 40 years Piltdown Man was heralded as the missing link between humans and their primate ancestors. But in 1953 scientists concluded it was a forgery. Radiocarbon dating showed the human skull was just 600 years old, while the jawbone was that of an orang-utan. The entire package of fossil fragments found at Piltdown - which included a prehistoric cricket bat - had been planted.
The devil's archaeologist
Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura was so prolific at uncovering prehistoric artefacts he earned the nickname "God's hands". At site after site, Fujimura discovered stoneware and relics that pushed back the limits of Japan's known history. The researcher and his stone age finds drew international attention and rewrote text books. In November 2000 the spell was broken when a newspaper printed pictures of Fujimura digging holes and burying objects that he later dug up and announced as major finds. "I was tempted by the devil. I don't know how I can apologise for what I did," he said.
Piltdown Turkey
The supposed fossil of Archaeoraptor, which was to become known as the "Piltdown turkey", came to light in 1999 when National Geographic magazine published an account of its discovery. It seemed to show another missing link - this time between birds and dinosaurs. Archaeoraptor appeared to be the remains of a large feathered bird with the tail of a dinosaur. The fossil was smuggled out of China and sold to a private collector in the US for £51,000. Experts were suspicious and closer examination showed the specimen to be a "composite" - two fossils stuck together with strong glue.
David Adam
Or they would all be wrong, or only one would be right.
Yeah, OK. Sure.
> defining this anthropologist's duplicitous actions, and motivations, as that of creationists
I said he used the same tactics. Lies and distortions. And that's the truth.
Are you going to define "Anti-religious bigot?" Or are you liek a DUer, throwing the word "Fascist" around without actually knowing what it means?"
Actually, I just wanted to reestablish our posting. It's always refreshing to see you on a thread. Whether I agree or disagree, you pose an interesting challenge.
And if you want to call me a DUer, that's OK. We both know it's not true. You and I simply use those 'cattle prods' to gain reaction to something we to which we want an answer.
The point of my 'anti-religious bigot' remark was to tweak you for cloning this lying sack of anthropology to 'creationists'. There are enough black marks on both sides of the crevo ledger that no one should feel that comfortable when throwing stones at the other.
My sentence construction in that last post was appalling. I'm eating a Qdoba burrito. It affects me.
So no creationists understand how science works? Pretty broad brush, don't you think?
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Well, I've never seen a creationist that wasn't either ignorant, brainwahsed or evil. That's what Richard Dawkins said and he is a real scientist.
Besides, if it would be possible that the whole history of modern in man europe would come unraveled based on the exposure of fraud in the work of one scientist then science would be like any other human activity, subject to politics and errors and in need of correction sometimes. Science is above all this.
Your accusations against Behe are libelous rot. Shame on you for calling an honest man a liar. You may disagree with Behe's conclusions, but that does not mean that he is falsifying his data, as this evolutionist did.
The Nazi's were only attempting to act out the logical consequneces of Darwin's ideas. All kinds are in a struggle to survive. Only Aryan life counted to them. The link's between Darwinism at Nazism are too well known to even debate with you- you who are so quick to ascribe evil intent to others. Your conduct is contemptable really.
> The point of my 'anti-religious bigot' remark was to tweak you for cloning this lying sack of anthropology to 'creationists'.
For that to work logically, one would have to assume that the whole world of religion is Creationism-based, and to be opposed to Creationism is to be bigotted against all religions.
Tain't true.
> Shame on you for calling an honest man a liar.
He knows better. But he keeps trotting out the same bilge. What would you call someone like that?
> The Nazi's were only attempting to act out the logical consequneces of Darwin's ideas.
Horsepuckey. Genocide is not a logical consequence of Darwinism, anymore than nuking the bejesus out of, say, Mecca is a logical consequence of the Theory of Relativity.
> Your conduct is contemptable really.
Boo hoo... I guess I'm off your Christmas card list.
Some mormons (morons?) on bicycles came to my door (what's with the bicycle schtick?, the same guys drive an SUV at night when no one is looking), waste of time, seemed like pretend baptists, they are the real enemy. I think I will take a cruise to the Gallapagos and Machu Picchu next year and I will party all the way.
I took your advice. Blavatsky and "Theosophical" teachings are occult, which I mentioned in my reply. They are contrary to Western orthodox christianity and the Christian worldview. Surely you are not implying that they are consistent.
You don't know anything of the sort. In fact, the Guardian is a leftist newspaper populated by secular leftists.
The word creationist has a specific meaning. It refers to those of us who believe that God created the Universe. It is not a curse word, it doesn't imply Luddite and it is not synonomous with ignorant. Just as the left has attempted to dehumanize unborn babies with terms like "just a fetus" and "blob of cells" so the science community is attempting to paint "creationists" with a broad brush.
I would hope you don't jump on that bandwagon.
"For that to work logically, one would have to assume that the whole world of religion is Creationism-based, and to be opposed to Creationism is to be bigotted against all religions.
Tain't true."
Good to hear.
Which religions are you bigoted against? :)
Surely you jest - "science is above all this"? So scientists never have any other agenda than discovering the truth? If only that were true.
> Which religions are you bigoted against? :)
I am opposed to unreason. This does not negate religion... but it does stand opposed to the obviously silly in *any* religion.
Something tells me your sarcasm was a bit too subtle for me to read. If so, disregard previous rant.
> Blavatsky and "Theosophical" teachings are occult, which I mentioned in my reply. They are contrary to Western orthodox christianity and the Christian worldview. Surely you are not implying that they are consistent.
Where did I say they were? Where did I say the Nazis were *Christian* Creationists? I *DID* point of their Theosophical roots a few times.
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